Re: lynx-dev downloading and metadata

[David Woolley]

> command.  only thing new in your view of the matter is offering them
> regardeless of if they mean anything to current users or not.

HTTP servers should provide the same haeaders on a HEAD request as
they do on a GET request, and vv.

In terms of metadata in general, you should probably search for the
keywords "semantic web", as, whilst I've not followed this in detail,
I think a lot of work has been done in this area.  The real problem tends
to be that it is of no apparent benefit to the maintainer of the average
commercial web site, so there is no commercial pressure to code/support
it.

Specifically for file access, I would suspect any HTTP filesystem
metadata support is in the the WEB DAV extensions.

I would expect any well managed site to return a correct last modified
date for downloaded files, although web page dates can be upset by server
side includes/ASP/PHP type processing.  I know of one site that completely
reloads the server every week using tools that reset the modification date -
that is a problem with lack of technical sophistication, not with a policy.

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